Fledgling (novel) - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

The novel tells the story of Shori, who appears to be a 10 or 11 year old African-American girl, but is actually a 53 year old member of a race called "Ina", or vampires. They are nocturnal, long-lived and derive sustenance from the drinking of human blood. They are physically superior to humans, both in strength and the ability to heal from injury, but the Ina's relationships with humans whose blood they drink are non-lethal and symbiotic.

The story opens as Shori awakens with no knowledge of who or where she is, in the wilderness and suffering from critical injuries. Although she is burned and has major skull trauma, she kills and eats the first animal that approaches her. A construction worker named Wright picks her up on the side of the road, and they begin a vampire-human relationship.

While staying at Wright's home, Shori feeds on other inhabitants of the town, and develops a relationship with an older woman named Theodora. Shori and Wright return to a burned-out, abandoned village near where she woke up to learn more about her past. They eventually meet Iosif, Shori’s father, who tells her the burned out town was once her home, where she lived with her sisters and mothers. They also learn that Wright and Shori’s mutually beneficial relationship makes Wright Shori’s symbiont. Furthermore, Shori’s dark skin is the result of genetic modification with which the Ina were experimenting to make their kind resistant to daylight.

Later Iosif’s settlement is burned down like Shori’s home was. Shori and Wright meet the only two human symbionts who survived, Celia and Brook. Shori adopts Celia and Brook as her own symbionts, and the four flee to another house that Iosif is known to keep. When they are at this new house, they are attacked by several men with gasoline and guns, but they escape.

The group travels to the Gordon family settlement, where they are welcomed and guarded by human symbionts during the day. These guards capture three new attackers alive. The Gordon family interrogates the intruders and finds that they were sent by the Silks, another Ina family. The Gordons suspect the attacks on Shori are motivated by disdain for the genetic experimentation that created Shori.

The Gordon family calls a Council of Judgment on Shori’s behalf. Thirteen Ina families and their symbionts come to the Gordon settlement to discuss the Silks attack on Shori. While the Council is happening, Katherine Dahlman sends one of her symbionts to kill Theodora, Shori’s symbiont. So in addition to issuing a punishment the Silks, the Council must also punish Katherine Dahlman. The Silks have their sons taken from them, to be adopted by other Ina families. Thus the Silk line will die out. Katherine Dahlman is sentenced to have her leg amputated. However, she refuses this punishment and is consequently executed.

As the book ends, Shori is invited to live with a group of female Ina, the Braithwaite family, to whom she is distantly related.